From closet door to dining bar

Materials: Closet door

Description: This is kind of an easy hack, but really gave my new apartment the look I was going for. It doesn’t require a lot of work either, just need the right material and you will have it done in 30 min, max.

The hack consists in using an Ikea closet door as a bar for lunch, dinner, or whatever. What is also special about this bar is that it doesn’t touch the floor at any point, it’s hanging from the ceiling, which apart from giving a very modern look to the place is very useful for cleaning and will save you from kicking the bar legs being barefoot first thing in the morning when drinking your coffee (you can say, this guy is stupid, but you will know it will eventually happen!).

Well getting to it, all you need to do is get your Ikea closet door, attach some metal bars (I used L shaped bars) to prevent it from flexing. Note that if you are using more than one short bar (like I did) that the length of bars that overlap must be in the middle of the space between the cables and the wall, not in the real middle of the door.

Then fix you two L supports to the wall.

Make the corresponding holes on the ceiling and on the door to fix the cables. Use a chair or something similar to hold the bar while you adjust the length of the cables and fix them.

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Jules IKEAHacker "I am Jules, the engine behind IKEAHackers and the one who keeps this site up and running. My mission is to capture all the wonderful, inspiring, clever hacks and ideas for our much loved IKEA items".

For everyone who asked, and for those of you who didn’t but were wondering anyway, I just found out the name of the door I used. It’s a PERFEKT NEXUS Cober Panel for High Cabinet.In my specific case it’s the 80’’ long version.

The door is 49,5 inches wide. I’m totally with you, I could probably had found a longer angled steel, but as you said, I just moved into the city, so I don’t have many tools or any kind of transportation, so for now I’m using the most commercial places to buy stuff (HomeDepot to be specific), I’m sure I will find better and cheaper ones with time.

I’m not sure where you got the angled steel, but I’m sure there is somewhere you could have gotten a longer piece to span the entire length. The only problem I see is that you might have wanted framing around the edges as well as the middle, but that’s without know how wide the door actually is.

Also, although the cable clips you’re using look fine, my personal preference would have been to use aluminum sleeves and swage the wire. But taht would involve a lot of tools I’m sure you didn’t want to spend money on for a project like this.

Well, I hope that now you’ve seen an example you decide to take your idea to reality! Just e.mail me (uillermo@wikiarquitectura.com) if you think I can help at all.

About the ceiling. In my case I have I have a continue slab (I’m not sure if this is the right word in English) of reinforced concrete, so I really didn’t had to care much about where to put the cables. If in your case you have a ceiling that works with unidirectional or bidirectional beams then you will have to be a little more careful, but you can definitely still do it.

And about the end of the table “swaying”, yes, you are totally right, I mean as I said in my previous comment you have to be reasonable about the use you are going to make of this kind of table, definitely not ideal if you have kids, host many parties, etc. but if you use it the right way it works fine. I’ve hit it a couple of time accidentally as you said and the end moved a bit (1cm maybe..), but that’s more because I have wooden walls than because of the table itself. The strongest your wall is the less “swaying” you will have, and of course using bigger “L’s” on the wall will also help (your wooden solution might be a good one since you can have more connection points from the wall to the table all along the table)

Sure, safety is always first, however I don’t think this is not safe at all… if you calculate the beam and cables right (or you can always oversize them if you don’t know how to calculate them) you shouldn’t be worried about the table falling, flexing, or the tables integrity in any way.

And then of course you have to think where you are going to place this and what you are going to is it for… be responsible, you definitely don’t want to sit on the table, or have little children playing around all the time, drunk friend at a party saying “what happens if I press here, sit there, or push that way”. But I just use it to have breakfast and read the newspaper, and for that I can guaranty its totally safe (maybe I will send some pictures in 6 months or so to show the table hasn’t flex or anything, I’m not sure if they will post them here, but I can try).

Hey Guillermo, great idea. It’s funny because I have been thinking of doing pretty much the exact same thing…for forever, now–haven’t gotten around to it, because I probably have been over-complicating it. I could never decide what to use as the actual table top. Hadn’t thought of using a closet door. I’d also thought I’d use some pieces of wood screwed to the wall, where you’ve used the L-brackets.

I’m assuming that wherever the stud/beam in the ceiling is, is what decides where the cables go.

Even if the tabletop is fastened securely to the wall…it seems like there would be some “sway” or “give” from side to side on the other end. Especially if someone was in a hurry, etc, walking by, and bumped into the end accidentally. But it doesn’t sound like you’ve had this issue.

You probably didn’t reinforce the door enough. As I said on the post you must use some kind of metal bar as a main beam, and if you are using short bats (long beams can be hard to find and even harder to carry) you have to make sure that all the bars are working together as one and that the overlapping length (that means their strongest part) is placed in the midpoint between the cable and the wall (not in the middle of the table), since that’s the point where you will have a maximum bending moment.

For those of you who want to try it I encourage you to do so, if you follow the steps you will have no problems. I just graduated from architecture in Spain and this is quite a simple structure to calculate, I trust my numbers, plus the table has been up for over one month now and it’s still as the first day.

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